Stick figure
From Ultimatewiki
The stick figure is a very simplistic type of drawing, generally of the human form, although stick figures of other types of animals are possible (for example, a stick figure dog). In a stick figure, the head is represented by a circle, sometimes embellished with details such as eyes or crudely-scratched-out hair. The neck, arms, legs and torso are all represented by single straight lines (thus the name). The neck and torso are different segments of one straight line.
Generally, stick figures are drawn by hand with a pen or pencil and have hard, defined edges. Though not displaying very much detail, what is drawn is generally required. For instance, if one was to draw a person, the person's eyebrows would generally only be drawn to provide a sort of facial expression, be it of anger or shame.
Stick figures have proven effective as a source of advertising, entertainment and as a form of storyboarding and practice for filmwork. This is especially crucial for creating "animatics", as a film special effects team is then able to visually display the outcome of a scene by using stick figures, but saving in money, time and effort of providing a completed shot, but only having to have the necessary information provided.
The MMORPG Kingdom of Loathing is known for its comic use of crudely drawn stick figures.
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Animation
Flash
Stick figures are typically a form of vector art, in relevance to ones viewed on the internet, so stick figure animations are often created in Adobe Flash. Stick figures are somewhat frequently used because they are easy to draw and can depict deep amounts of action. Although they're often drawn in a 2D environment, 3D is sometimes simulated.
Pivot
Pivot Stickfigure Animator is an animation program that allows easy animation of stick figures.
PowerPoint
Microsoft PowerPoint has also been used to make stick figure movies as an alternative to Flash. By creating a slide with a stick figure in it, copying and pasting a new slide and changing the new slide users can create a movie, although without key frames and tweening, it is a much more laborious process.
Animation technique
Stick figures may also pull in detail to the character while still leaving them easy to draw. The most common forms of this are detailed heads and accessories such as shoulder pads or necklaces. By simply changing the way a stick figure walks or stands, one may also change them from being simple to mildly sophisticated.
